- Joseph Merrill Currier
Joseph Merrill Currier (1820 –
April 22 1884 ) was a Canadian member of parliament and businessman.He was born in
North Troy, Vermont in 1820 and moved to Canada in 1837, where he began work in the timber trade. Around 1850, he set up asawmill andgristmill operation atManotick, Ontario withMoss Kent Dickinson . He also operated his own lumber business inNew Edinburgh from 1853 to the late 1860s and was a partner in the Wright, Batson and Currier Company withAlonzo Wright which operated a saw mill atHull, Quebec . In 1868, Currier built a house at24 Sussex Drive , for his third wife Hannah, which is now used as the official residence for thePrime Minister of Canada . Currier named the house "Gorffwysfa", Welsh for place of rest.Currier became a member of the city council for Ottawa in the 1860s. In 1863, he was elected as a representative for Ottawa in the
Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada . He supported Confederation and continued to represent Ottawa in theParliament of Canada until 1882. During that period, he was forced to resign on April 16 1877 because his firms had done business with the government of Canada; he was re-elected in aby-election on May 9 1877.From 1872 to 1877, he was president of the Citizen Printing and Publishing Company which produced the Ottawa Daily Citizen. He also was president of two railway companies in the
Ottawa area, theOttawa and Gatineau Valley Railway and theOntario and Quebec Railway . He was also connected with many other companies in the construction, banking and insurance industries. He began encountering financial problems in the 1870s and ,in 1878, when the saw mill in Hull burned, he was bankrupt.He was appointed postmaster of Ottawa in May 1882. He died in 1884 in
New York City and is buried inBeechwood Cemetery .Currier had three wives: Christina Wilson who he married in 1846 and who died in 1858; Anne "Annie" Elizabeth Crosby; and Hannah Wright, daughter of
Ruggles Wright , who he married in 1868. He married his second wife in January 1861 and brought her to Manotick a month later. While viewing the machinery in the mill, Annie's dress became caught in the turbine shaft and she was thrown against a post and died. Currier is said to have never visited Manotick again and he cut his ties to the business there in 1863. According to local legend, Annie's ghost continues to hauntWatson's Mill in Manotick.External links
* [http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=5460 Biography at "the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online"]
* [http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/people/key/bio.asp?Language=E&query=2856 Federal Political Experience]
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